Customer Reviews

Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide to Navigating Major Career Transitions

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first started my career (back in the big-hair 80s), you had ample time to get up to speed and prove yourself. The reasoning is that there was naturally a learning curve and you had to be given time to learn the career and the position you were starting out.

Fast forward to 2008. Two of us were hired within 2 weeks of each other for a major health insurance company. We both worked together to get up to speed. I thought we were both making comparable progress. But low and behold, very suddenly less than 3 months after we were hired, he was very suddenly let go. The statement I heard from my manager was "it was clear he didn't wasn't going to be successful in this organization so it was best for us to not waste his time and ours by keeping him on any longer". That was it -- less than 90 days and he was gone.

With more than 10 percent of the workforce unemployed, employers expect new employees to hit the ground running. If they don't, they aren't going to waste time on "slow bloomers" and they'll lose no time replacing you with someone who does have the skills.

This book provides insight into what type of clues employers are looking for to see if you will "make it" and be successful in the organization. It provides concrete suggestions about how to prove that you are learning what you need to know and if you are not learning -- how to acquire that knowledge quickly and under the radar so that it does not appear that you are "floundering" and raise red flags withing management.

This book is a must have for individuals starting their careers as well as employees with a lot of experience. Just because you were successful in one organization is no guarantee that you will be successful in others and this book helps you identify an action plan to increase your chances of getting up to speed quickly so that you won't suffer the same fate as my co-worker.

Good luck!

[NCJVR]

I have never read a book that more thoroughly spelled out the odd place a career transition can be, and offer tips to navigate the situation.
If you are mid-career and are mulling over the options before you, you may find this to be an indispensable read. It helps to clarify and shed light on aspects you may not have considered.

Watkins previous book was extremely insightful and helpful--THE FIRST 90 DAYS. It offered clear cut advice to new managers.

This book is an attempt for experienced leaders to weather through sweeping transitions using his own model: STARS. Start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success.

Great idea but the delivery is a bit flat. He's speaking to a very SMALL audience of people who probably would not seek out books like this to guide them. And some of the advice is just not practical or useful. Because the book focuses on some highly situational circumstances, the tome lacks depth and any sense of realism. Watkins obviously drew from years of experience here, but it seems as if he has a truly small niche of leadership that he deals with. Plus, Watkins barely addresses the sheer humanity we find in great leadership. This text is just far too pragmatic and limiting in its approach. A good mentor for leaders takes on the whole person, Watkins fails to do that in this book.

This will be one of those books that helps Watkins' career as he will no doubt use it with his clients. However, for a majority of coaches and leaders out there, this is a book I would never offer up to help someone navigate through transition.

Do you ever dream of landing a promotion? Who doesn't? You could finally nab that corner office with a view. Your colleagues would start looking up to you as an adept leader (theoretically). Your newfound ability to buy a beach house wouldn't hurt, either.

The reality is different. Promotions, no matter how fantastic they sound, can pose a serious challenge. Just ask leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins. This former Harvard Business School professor, who now chairs Genesis Advisers, previously wrote the renowned transition guide "The First 90 Days." In his newest book, he chronicles the obstacles that fresh-off-the-promotion leaders face.

"Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide to Successfully Navigating Major Career Transitions" explores how to effectively navigate eight common types of promotions. The types of promotions in the book cover common challenges that leaders face, from leading former peers to politicking correctly in your new position.

Each chapter in this guide is dedicated to one kind of promotion. Starting with a case study of a person facing the situation in question, you learn what risks come with the promotion, why they happen, and how to navigate your new role successfully. Watkins uses academic research, diagrams, and bullet lists to help you understand his points. You'll also learn how your company can help you with your transition in each chapter.

Content

The first chapter describes leadership challenges you might face after being promoted to a new position within your company. In the next chapter, you learn how to effectively navigate the challenges associated with leading former peers, such as asserting authority and changing your relationships.

After that, Watkins moves on the challenges that higher-level leaders face. The "corporate diplomacy challenge" tells authoritative, results-oriented managers how to successfully politick, influence, and build alliances. The "onboarding challenge" shows you how to ease into a new organization without being alienated by the existing culture.

Next comes a relatively condensed chapter on moving to a new location (this is such an involved topic that it really deserves a book of its own). After that, you learn how to navigate the turnaround of a troubled organization, and realign a complacent organization in order to prevent crises.

Your Next Move concludes with a chapter on handling a mixed scenario, or "business portfolio challenge." Here, you figure out where to focus when different parts of your company are at different states of the STARS (start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, sustaining success) continuum.

Comments

Your Next Move prepares you well for any number of promotions. Watkins admits in the first chapter that the book doesn't cover every single transition challenge. But "if you can deal with these eight tough transitions, you can deal with just about anything," he writes. What he does cover, he covers thoroughly, so you're exposed to elements that could appear in a multitude of challenges.

As with any preparatory guide, it is best read with a level head. If you read it in advance of a promotion, as part of your general business education, you'll learn what to expect. When you are promoted, some of the scenarios Watkins describes won't come as a surprise. Instead of firefighting, you'll have an idea of what questions to ask. I think this is the best way to read the book. I'm not sure how helpful it would be if you're already in the midst of a stressful promotion-the book doesn't address survival in depth.

The book assumes basic business knowledge; expect "businessy" language. Personally, the only jargon I found overwhelming was the author's frequent mention of STARS. I thought that despite some technical and academic language, the book flows well.

Watkins' intimate knowledge of transitions makes the book a valuable read. There's no question that Watkins really knows what he's talking about. You don't risk getting uneducated advice in Your Next Move. Watkins integrates a lot of his own rigorous research, but puts it into language most business-minded people can understand.

Overall, I recommend it. It is valuable for anyone with a general business interest, not only those who anticipate an imminent promotion. Read it before you even expect to get promoted, so that you learn how to start off on the right foot.

(Review by Drea Knufken)

If you've got a firm date for an upcoming significant career move, you're already in transition according to author Michael Watkins. Like it or not, you're being judged by others during this period and their support or lack of it depends on how you manage your transition. In this respect it's no different from the "first 100 days" that pundits use to define a newly elected U.S. President's term in office.

The basic assumption of Your Next Move is that career transitions evolve through a series of predictable stages. Author Michael Watkins' lifelong passion is studying, documenting and coaching career transitions. Transitions are by definition high-stake periods where the subject sets the tone, the expectations and wins or loses support. Watkins feels that such moments are not the time to learn the hard way by making big mistakes, that career transitions must be handled well the first time and every time.

Whenever we're presented with an "ideal resume," it always shows career progression with the subject moving through ever more challenging and responsible positions. This book targets the transitions themselves which last about 90 days and can set a person up for a yet better chance to get ahead. Disguised versions of real life transition stories breathe life into scariness of this unique time.

The value of this book is that it can help somebody going through such a period to see what is happening objectively. Others have gone through it and the period evolves through stages. Your Next Move provides tools that few would think up on their own in the midst of surviving the transition. To name a few of these tools: formally mapping influence networks; tables to input information to assess how influential players are likely to perceive their interests and diplomacy checklists.

Finally, Your Next Move gives prescriptive advice for different types of transition challenges. The turnaround challenge is a particularly difficult one to navigate. With the help of Watkins' material, one can remove some of the stress by viewing their own transition more objectively and using the many tools provided to manage their 90 days.

I liked the various personal stories that the Author used to illustrate each career move however; they did not hook me in enough to keep reading. However, overall the content was dry and seemed to rehash advice from the previous book The First 90 Days.

The audience that the book reaches out to is very narrow and frankly seems to address people who already have the job and are struggling to get control of where they are. If you are in a position and pay attention to the person above you in the organization you should be able to pick up the information there verse from this text.

As always, there are some good nuggets of wisdom

-Identify and understand the culture before you make changes.
-Don't confuse a title with influence and power.

It was just difficult to get through and not very gripping.

After receiving a promotion and getting additional responsibility in my organization, the transition to the next level required a major learning curve. This book outlined a lot of helpful information that made my ability to plan, re-organize and gain the support of my colleagues to succeed beyond what I even expected for myself. Armed with the strategies and proper analytical methods to implement changes, as covered in this leadership book, helped me foresee the issues that often plague those who are ill prepared.

Excellent book.

This is essential reading for mid-level and high-level management positions.

Highly recommend.

YOUR NEXT MOVE: THE LEADER'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING MAJOR CAREER TRANSITIONS tells how to survive and thrive in all major transitions leaders can expect to face during their career, from promotions to leading former peers. Modern business leaders face new roles and responsibilities: YOUR NEXT MOVE provides the strategies and tools needed to identify and navigate major turning points.

If you've just been promoted into a major executive position at your firm, here's hoping you can dodge the bullets your new colleagues will aim directly at your head. Likewise, moving from one corporate business unit to another or taking an executive position at a new company present difficulties. So how should you handle yourself? Leadership development expert Michael D. Watkins outlines eight common executive-career transitions and lays out how to deal with them. He explains why leaders making career moves must step carefully amid office politics, corporate life-stage changes, overseas challenges and business pitfalls. getAbstract recommends his sage advice and savvy suggestions to any executive making a career move. Here's how to do it right.

I started to read this book when I found out my position in senior management was being eliminated. Based on the title, I thought this book would help me consider what I bring to a leadership role and hone those skills. I was hoping it would help guide me not to find another job, but what to bring to that new job. I was mis-led by the title, but continued to read the book since it would apply to me as I did transition into a new position with a new company.

Now that I've have six months in my new position with a much more stable organization, I re-read the book. I have to say, in my case it still didn't help much. The way I see it is that some organizations that are stable are also the most difficult to try new ways to lead. They have been successful with their current formula, so a new leader coming in bringing in new ideas finds themselves hitting a wall. This book does give some insights to knock through those walls, but it's a case by case basis. If you are taking on a new leadership role with a progressive company, this is the book for you though.

I've read many career counseling books, they are pretty much all the same to me. You pick up a few things you didn't think about, it reinforces what you've seen work, but many times they keep saying the same thing another author states in other books. To me, pick a book like this up, re-read it once a year, and you'll be golden. I don't know if it's worthwhile to purchase another career counseling book that isn't saying much different from others. I haven't read this author's previous books, but I'm certain ideas and even pages are recycled into this one.